Our Cruise - September 2015

Cruise Ship Blog September 2015

Day One

Early start. As always almost impossible to get Joyce out of bed at any decent hour, she always wants a bit more sleep.

Made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare, and spent an hour or so in Koru having breakfast. Bumped into three or four current or former work colleagues checking in.

Turned off my work phone and tucked it away in my bag after deleting a few emails. Probably should have left it at home but I might need it for emergencies.

Joyce not happy that I have posted on Facebook that we are overseas as she thinks it is an invitation to someone to burgle the house. Can’t seem to delete the post and people are already wishing us a happy anniversary holiday. Oh well.

Uneventful flight over and got the train to the cruise embarkation point where we were drafted like a mob of wild cattle and the herded aboard in groups

Joyce is excited, I am not sure what she imagined we were in for but she is as pleased as punch to be onboard though a little concerned about the position of the cabin. It is towards the rear of the ship. Once we check with reception we learn that it is at the end of the middle part of the ship so all is good.

                                     

I can see why people talk about putting on weight on a cruise, everyone seems to have made a beeline for the free food and the cafes are crowded. (I weighed myself this morning back home and somehow lost 3 kg’s)

The Pacific Pearl looks to be an older ship, if you look hard enough you can see bits of rust under the paint work. But it looks ok and the crew are great.

First thing on the events calendar is the lifejacket drill and then I think it will be time for a beer.

The lifeboat drill was a bit of a shambles as the PA failed and the DJ had to read off the hardcopy, emergency handout. I hope the PA works if there is a real emergency.

The leaving party started before our drill was finished, some noisy kiwi band.

I wanted to see the ship leave port and Joyce wanted to watch the band so we parted ways. Joyce had instructions to buy me a beer and find me at the stern. The contingency plan to meet failed immediately and Joyce drank half my beer before I found her.

Only an hour and a half into the official cruise and it already looks quite messy in places. A lot of people are clearly here to drink as much as possible in the shortest time possible.

The team dealing with the passengers is mostly brown skinned from all over the world. I assume by the accents the team running the ship are white, as are most of the passengers. Who range from real wrinklies, a lot in wheel chairs or using walkers, to what appears a rather large number of bogans.

When I first started as a courier in central Auckland I used to exit some lifts completely disorientated, and at home, at night I often used to feel as if I was swaying, and still going up and down the lifts. 

That’s what the ship feels like at the moment and it is calm. Fuck knows what it will feel like if it gets a bit rough. It is also bloody windy, surprise, surprise. And colder than I thought. Lucky I packed a jersey.

Third world ship, wireless costs a shitload so I will use my phone if I want connect. Just got a txt from the Vodafone maritime satellite with charges. Maybe I won’t turn my phone on at all.

Went to a show. The music and the performance was pretty slick, but musicals do nothing for me. The karaoke in one of the bars afterwards was excruciatingly painful but far more entertaining. No we did not participate.

Dinner in one of the restaurants looked as though it was warmed up about six months ago and reheated today. I think we will take our chances with the buffet tomorrow instead of the restaurant. Quite frankly it was terrible.

The beer might be expensive, but no more than at a bar at home. The ship is rolling around a bit.

Day Two

Still on NZ time so I woke at about 3am and didn’t really get back to sleep. The boat is rolling around in the swell, it is a weird feeling as the bed is length ways which exaggerates the rolling effect. 

Level one alert announcement at about 5am did not help. The PA does work. Got up and had a shower and gathered stuff together in case we had to evacuate and put into practice what we didn’t learn at the evacuation exercise yesterday. An hour or so there was a stand down message. Sounds like an alarm of some kind went off in the galley. Maybe they had a fire.

Also felt a bit queasy. I’ll blame it in the rolling, pitching motion that I am not used to. But maybe it was that last beer or two. Still a good breakfast and I am more or less right. The buffet food was really good, so I guess that is where we will eat. Joyce lost an earring but the guys that look after the room found it. We’ll have to use them a decent tip in the envelope they helpfully left for us.

Despite me being the one that didn’t get a good night’s sleep Joyce has decided that she needs a snooze so I have to go and do some work on my book somewhere else. I’ll just wait for the laptop to charge fully.

Looks like if you don’t engage with the activities it will get a bit boring unless you do something. Unless you simply want to drink and eat to excess, or just rest and this is ok to. Lots of reading.

                                     

No phone or email. I feel as if I have my throat cut. And later in the day, welcome to the vagaries of cruising. 

Tomorrow was supposed to be a visit to Moreton Island but the weather is deteriorating so we are not going to call there now. Another sea day- not sure where or what that means, hopefully the ship will turn around and head somewhere where the weather is more settled.

It does look a bit wilder out the front of the ship. Note to self. Don’t drink too much otherwise I might stumble around a little bit more.

Of course what happens is that by the time we have completed our walk around the wind drops, the sun comes out and the sea flattens out. The Captain can't win.

Day Three

Still no internet. Not sure what is going on in the world. If the cloud died this is what it would look and feel like. Still have not bought any minutes. 

Uneventful night, though the ship is rolling and pitching more. Though we are more used to it now. Big difference in how it feels between where our cabin is and the extremities of the ship as both ends go up and down. The sea doesn’t look too much rougher than yesterday but it is a lot windier.

Needless to say we are not spending a lot of time on deck. Sitting in a lounge up the front of the ship.  Great view of, well the sea. The sea here is quite busy with ship traffic, freighters and another large cruise ship chasing us up or down the coast. I think we are still headed north, but for how long?

9.15am and we have had a good breakfast and Joyce is beside me stretched out on a couch.

Dennis’s birthday tomorrow so we will have to break internet silence and send him a message.

Seems we have turned around, actually I think we swung around to a new heading last night sometime.

After breakfast and spending some time in the lounge right up the front of the ship, had a snooze. Surfaced and had lunch to find the sea and the wind had dropped and it was quite pleasant having a bear on the rear deck. Pretty typical I guess, Captain makes a decision based on the weather forecast and immediately proven wrong.

Lots of sleeping and writing. Already have the disembarkation instructions. Looks like they are keen to get us off as quickly as possible on the morning of Day 5..

Day Four

Woke up at 5ish and had a decent sleep. Managed to get Joyce up at a decent hour for breakfast. 

Logged into the internet. Aus $0.75 a minute to send Dennis an email as it is his birthday today. 

Raining this morning but looks to be clearing up. Tried to log into google maps to see where we are. Must be under the radar as it can’t find us. Just realized how many really important personal emails I get. Not many, actually in the course of four days, none. The night before we left I set up some Facebook ads. Lots of likes bit no extra sales.

Had breakfast and now roaming the ship. Spent an hour or so in a café working on the great New Zealand novel and now it is time for another snooze. The rain has stopped and it looks quite pleasant outside.

It has turned out nice and have a had few pleasant beers in the sun and taken some photos. Time to have another snooze.

While I was having a beer on the upper deck I noticed that one of the stacks on the funnel had a dent. Should we be worried? Are we going to be negotiating a low hanging structure? I wonder what it hit.                 

                                 

Update from the Captain, someone has noticed a recreational fishing boat in distress so we are turning around to have a look and go to the rescue.

Update number 2- just a bunch of drunk Aussie fishermen with their radios off  in the middle of nowhere. Alarm over. Everyone waves as we go past and head back the way we came.

                   

Early night. Don't sleep much. Always up and about early when I have a trip to make, a plane to catch. Still 2am is ridiculous                                                

Day Five- the longest day.

Woke at about 1 am and didn’t really get back to sleep, though I must have as I had a few dreams. Woken or kept awake by lots of activity, the neighbours packing at 2 am ish and people talking and yahooing.

The ship docked early and we were off the ship before 9am. What are we going to do for the rest of the day? Got the train to the airport only to find we couldn’t check the bag early in like we thought so went out and rented a car to go for a tiki tour. Then found the beach. Cronulla.

Riding the train and having a bit of a look around makes me realize how much older Sydney is than Auckland, and how much of it reminds me of 1970's images of English cities. Gritty and grimy.

Got back to the airport fairly early, the customs guys are on a rolling strike, so it seemed to make sense to get here a little early and enjoy Koru. Looks like we are going to be enjoying it for another forty five minutes now as the strikes delayed the earlier outbound services.

Plane delayed by an hour and a half but at least we got home in the end. I am still rocking and rolling.

By the way we had a great time on the ship.

Day Six

Home.

I am still rocking and rolling and doing the washing.

The Lifeboat

I have finally completed the first draft of the third novel in the Skidian Chronicles series, tentatively titled; 'The Lifeboat'. This was supposed to the final novel in the series. However, there are some loose ends that I feel I need to tidy up, even if in doing so I am merely satisfying my own curiosity.

On the other hand I need to satisfy my growing audience as well.

I am going to start to post some excerpts from The Lifeboat in my blog and create a readers group to critique and provide feedback as I progress with the editing process. Let me know if you are interested in being a part of this team.

The Lifeboat.

Prologue

Far out on the dark, frozen perimeter of the solar system a comet reached the outward limit of its orbit about the sun and began to blaze a trail back towards the inner system. This particular comet had never been recorded in human history or detected by any of mankind’s increasingly sophisticated astronomical instruments as it swung along its path.

Eventually the comet did come to the notice of terrestrial astronomers and was given the designation 2013D4. Comet 2013D4’s course was projected more or less accurately, enough to suggest that it did not pose an immediate danger to earth along with a number of other celestial bodies. For a number of reasons, not least that people wanted to know whether the bodies posed a risk or not to planet earth, some of these bodies were higher on the list than others in terms of importance and scrutiny. Comet 2013D4 was well down that list and nobody noticed a couple of unusual course changes that on close inspection could not be easily explained.

For a long time nobody picked up on 2013D4’s exact trajectory and when they did there was some idle speculation between the groups of astronomers that were interested enough in the possible outcome to discuss its route as it sped toward, then possibly impacting one or more of the Jupiter Trojans.

Eventually Comet 2013D4 ploughed into an asteroid called Automedon, knocking the asteroid out of its orbit, before it blasted out the other side of the Jupiter Trojans and carried on its merry way.

This kind of impact wasn’t all that unusual and happened regularly enough that astronomers thought little of it at the time. Automedon bounced around like a big marble knocking other, smaller asteroids out of the way. Then somehow it was flung out of the Trojan field and was hurtling its way towards the centre of the solar system where it would either meet its end in a mighty collision with the sun or be flung outward again to begin a journey through the solar system until it hit something else or degraded away to nothing.

Every little bit helps

Suddenly I seem to be getting some attention in the big wide world. Book sales are steady if unspectacular and people keep following me on Twitter, even though I have little to tweet. The Command Authority, using my spare phone tweets for me more often than I do. Though it would be fair to say that this is more by accident than design.

To cap this off people at work keep downloading my book and or swapping hard copies around  between them and actually  seem to be enjoying the read. Either that or they are saying nice things about me on the hope of a free coffee.

All this helps to encourage me to spend more time on the third (I hesitate to say final) chapter in he Skidian Chronicles series. Not easy after a long day at work and there is more to life than work and the second job that costs far more in time and effort than any hope of return.

This intermittent blog is actually a good way to warm up to the process of writing and to provide some shameless self promotion. Pity it is now 9.20pm and it is almost my bedtime.

Some neat new reviews for the First Skidian Chronicle

If you really needed a reason to buy both novels

"Easy fun read. I didn't really like the ending at first, but the second book clears it all up."


and well what can a man say?

"It took me a while to pick this book up only because I'd promised Keith I'd be brutally honest and I didn't want to disappoint! Turned out to be a book that I was unable to put down this weekend and wished I had read it sooner!

A surprisingly good and easy read, Sue P'd me off a few times due to her lack of knowledge about farming, or anything hah! The love scenes were a bit quirky (thats all ill say about that), and the arrogance of the Skidians and how it affected Bruce was pretty comical. Not quite sure if this was sci fi enough for me if that makes sense but It's only the first so am looking forward to reading the second over the long weekend."

Winston for Prime Minister

Of Godzone that is.........

One of the things that I know I could and should do (far more of and more often) is to to write a regular blog to build readership for the great New Zild novels that I reckon I have already created and those that are swirling around in the back of my mind.

Of course it is never that easy. I have a job that I quite like and pays me petty well and  seems to take up a lot of my time and a Command Control Authority (CCA) that also keeps me in line.

For me writing is pretty much a hobby, I can dream that one day I will be able to write full time and be able to keep myself and the CCA living pretty much as we do today. Realistically, fat chance of that ever happening. The CCA wouldn't stand for it and I also want to buy a new motorbike later on in the year.

Now you maybe wondering what this has to do with the new MP for Northland.

Well quite a bit really. Well it did when I was having a beer and thinking about this and then deciding that I should write something. I'll keep tapping away and maybe it will come to me.

It shouldn't actually be a surprise to people that Winston won the Northland seat recently and that he is so popular in the region. After all, he is one of their (our) own and his redneck immigration policies aside (not too far down the track we are all immigrants after all) he stands for the middle road and. in Northland that is what the people want.

The right level of government support where it is required for the people that need it and a reasonably level playing field for business to do it's thing and get stuff done. Nothing more and nothing less. A version of the great egalitarian Kiwi view of life that not too long ago was the way we viewed ourselves.

And yes, here is that little nugget that I was searching for. It was going to be something along the lines of don't leave it until too late to do the things on your bucket list.

But actually, the little nugget is that it is never too late to do the right thing.

You could start here by buying the great New Zild novel and then support NZild First.

Fill your boots and starve the oxygen thieves.

NZ Labour Party struggles for a clear purpose in the modern world

This week Prime Minister John Key announced the date of the next election. Predictably the NZ Labour Party led by David Cunliffe came out swinging in the belief that they are the still the main opposition party in New Zealand and have some kind of divine right to rule the country. Prepare yourself for a great leap backwards if the Labour Party is elected.

The NZ Labour Party was born out of a need to provide a voice for the working man in the bad old days and the party implemented a number of policies that we take for granted today.  But the world has moved on since the party was established in 1916 and the Labour Party seems to be struggling with establishing a clear place for itself in this modern world.

While there are always exceptions, the days of  big business and the rich as exploiters of the poor and the working man are almost behind us as the more enlightened leaders of business focus on engagement and treating their staff as partners rather than objects to exploit mercilessly in the pursuit of a buck. Unfortunately the last vestiges of Trade Union movement are populated with figures that perpetuate these antediluvian attitudes.

In general we are all far better educated today than our forbears were when the Labour movement was at it's height and our aspirations and expectations have changed as our lives have got richer. No longer will we stand for employers who do not treat us with dignity and respect but nor will we stand for a bunch of dogmatic Labour and Trades Union leaders telling us what is good for us when we can quite clearly see that they simply have their own self interests at heart. There are clear examples today where the sun is setting on some industries but the unions still want to maintain jobs that the rest of us would have to subsidise.

A clear sign of the identity struggle that Labour has is that the champion of the working class has elected someone as their leader who inhabits a world far removed from that of the people that he seeks to represent. Of more concern is that the political wing of the party has been highjacked by extremists from the party backrooms so if by chance the party is elected to power the country won't actually be governed by the elected members alone but by an uneasy coalition of the elected members, party members and Trade Unions.

The other challenge for Labour is that other parties have taken positions that they previously covered. The Green Party has siphoned off some of the intellectual capital that Labour has enjoyed in the past and NZFirst has become the home of the rednecks and interventionists.

Labour can't be the green champion because somebody else fills that space. National  fills the space of personal and fiscal responsibility and looking after those less fortunate.  All that is left for Labour is the role of leader of the Nanny State and most of use realise that, that isn't the right path for a modern progressive democracy.

Whichever way you look at it the NZ Labour Party is struggling for a clear purpose in the modern world and seems hellbent on taking us along a Great Leap backwards to the good old days because they have no clear vision of what a modern progressive democracy should look like.

Hopefully they'll kill themselves off after the next election.

The Second Coming-Media release

Media release for the Second Coming
Local Author Publishes Second Skidian Chronicle Sci Fi Novel on Amazon Kindle 

Auckland NZ, December 29 12 2013 – Auckland writer, Keith Fenwick, has released the second Kiwi themed satirical science fiction novel in the Skidian Chronicles trilogy; The Second Coming. This is Keith Fenwick’s second novel.

In his first novel “Skid - The First Chronicle” Keith Fenwick takes us to a highly sophisticated world where civilization is about to fall apart in a spectacular fashion. A world whose leader’s arrogantly assume that they can do no wrong in the face of the dangerous signs of a disintegrating world around them.

In the Second Coming Skid has undergone the apocalypse signaled in the first novel, now revealed to be the work of the malfunctioning computer intelligence charged with maintaining Skidian society as the most powerful and sophisticated in the known universe.

The Second Coming follows the main human characters, now back on planet earth, grappling with a gap in their lives they cannot explain and details the almost complete disintegration of a once powerful and sophisticated society. Skid once had a population that numbered in the hundreds of millions. By the time the story returns to the planet Skid after a short and eventful interlude on planet earth where a new pivotal Skidian character emerges and treats the locals with complete disdain, the population has dwindled to several thousand Skidians eking out a basic living as best they can.

The Second Coming reminds us how fragile a flower intelligent life is in our universe and how close we all are individually and collectively from disaster that threatens our way of life. One drunken miss step, one line of rogue code, one random, unprecedented incident on top of an unfolding disaster and it could be the end of most of us.

Reviewer Andrew Baker says, ‘I found the book quite fun, especially when I got to the meat of it. It's quite comical and some of the adventure and action made it so I had to keep reading on past my bed time. The Second Coming turned out to be a fun and funny read and I would recommend it to anyone that has the endurance for longer, slower adult science fiction novels.

The Second Coming Kindle version
http://www.amazon.com/Second-Coming-Skidian-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B00F8A9FRGASIN: B00F8A9FRG

The Second Coming Print version
http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-coming-Chronicle-Chronicles/dp/1492742619ISBN-13: 978-1492742616

The First Chronicle
Kindle version http://www.amazon.com/Skid-Tasting-plant-ebook/dp/B009FIAMXS
Print version http://www.amazon.com/Skid-The-tasting-plant-Volume-1/dp/1479378844

Review -The Second Coming

A Review for the Second Coming 

The Second Coming by Keith Fenwick is a next-in-series title about several different people whose stories are in some way related, but if you are just coming in you don't quite know how. Sue and Bruce are normal, everyday Earthlings... mostly. Sue, who owns a travel agency, is somehow pregnant when she hasn't had a sexual partner in a very long time. Her best guess is immaculate conception. 

Bruce, on the other hand, is a bit of a foul mouthed, rugged loner living off the land. He feels that something is missing--a chunk of his life perhaps. 

On the other hand, Mitch, a third Earth personality (and the United States President), was experiencing no abnormality in his life before a spaceship landed in an American military airplane hangar after a little airspace encroachment, battle, and chase. The alien flying that craft is Myfair, the happenstance ruler of a mostly unknown planet, Skid--the most advanced planet in the universe.

In the wake of a mind-blowing apocalypse on his planet caused by a malfunctioning computer intelligence charged with making Skidian life as easy as possible, Myfair was simply traversing the deep, not looking for anything in particular, when he accidentally stumbled upon Earth, violating American airspace and instigating a dogfight in the process. The skirmish caused him to lose control and scrape his ship across a range of mountains, forcing him to find a place to land. A secured military base is as good a place as any, wouldn't you think?

To you and me it would seem like an insanely stupid idea; but to an intelligent life form that considers us a pitifully ill-advanced, backwater planet that can be easily handled, an air of arrogance keeps our intelligent thought process from rendering us dangerous to a Skidian, and even worthy of note. This is why Myfair was just fine with parking in a military hangar and taking a Sunday stroll around, checking out American war planes. His lack of realization that there could in fact be danger on such an inconsequential planet is just the reason he runs into Bruce, Sue, and President Mitch, which begins their journey together.

As a critique, it takes a lot of reading to get to this point. It could have easily been a hundred or more pages shorter. In addition some of the sexual description was weird, almost as though it hardly had a place in the book. I don't mean all of the sex in general, which was very little, but when it popped up unexpectedly--specifically from the main female character's perspective--it took me by surprise and seemingly without reason. On the upside, there are almost no instances of it. In fact, all such instances containing sex probably only amount to a single page, or less even. My final critique is that Bruce's mother added an almost irritating ingredient to the mixture that bothered me--not because it existed, but because it worked itself into this book so late. Perhaps Fenwick touches on this in the first book, which could make me wrong in thinking this was new, but it was bothersome none-the-less.

All in all though, I found the book quite fun, especially when I got to the meat of it. As the book follows Myfair and other Skidians and allows you to see what their arrogance and underestimation gets them into, it's hard not to laugh. Reading about the effect that Bruce and Mitch have on others is no different; it's quite comical and some of the adventure and action made it so I had to keep reading on past my bed time. The Second Comingturned out to be a fun and funny read and I would recommend it to anyone that has the endurance for longer, slower adult science fiction novels.